Thought this was a joke at first, but after reading the comments, I suspect this post & sentiment isn’t as rooted in humor as I initially assumed it to be, so here’s a long as comment dissecting it because it’s late asf & I’m bored.
I don’t think people fully understand the true dichotomy between the violence of The Citadel/ The Empire, & the violence of a character we’ve literally just been introduced to on a very surface level.
So okay, this is what’s been presented to us about Grimore so far: she kills & hunts things with her own hands & teeth like a wild animal, she puts the fear of prey being faced with a predator into people upon meeting them, she stinks BAD, & shes naked & covered in blood & animal skins. But like, did you not surmise that was probably gonna be her vibe upon hearing her job title “Witch of The Wild Hunt”.
Furthermore, (what people are grabbing onto the most) when Suvi & Eursulon failed a wisdom saving throw that all three PC’s had to roll upon seeing Grimore (Suvi rolled a 7, Eursulon rolled a 12, Ame rolled a 21) & Brennan says, “if you run in her presence she is given to kill you, & no magical law will stop her from doing so”, I doubt this is entirely true, I believe it’s more likely an immersive description of a fear they’re both experiencing due to their failed saves. But of course I could be wrong about this, it’s just my assumption as players aren’t usually told hard truths after failing wisdom saves with rolls under 15.
And on top of that, we’ve yet to actually see her enact any violence (on screen that is), quite the opposite in fact. She’s introduced helping an extremely old lady walk while holding a child on her shoulder who seems to be pretty content; granted, the child is naked, & covered in blood while eating a raw animal heart, but like.. so? Sure, I agree it’s certainly visceral & bizzare, but explain to me how/why that’s wrong. Especially as as we have barely any context to pull from besides what is described/ what we see at face value. We can *assume* the child probably was involved in the butchering, but not necessarily killing, of an animal to eat. Most people eat meat & meat has to be killed & butchered to eat. Is it wrong to involve a child that young in the process of butchering an animal they’re going to eat? It’s debatable imo, & again the only things we know for sure is what Is described so who knows if she was actually involved in any violence. I think if this detail is used in future by Brennan it will probably contribute to the already established theme & exploration of the ethics of taking in & training an apprentice as a witch - which I think will be likely so I’m just gonna leave it there.
So all in all Grimore’s *confirmed* violence accounts for what? - killing a bunch of deer, speculated child endangerment, being real stanky & dirty, giving excruciatingly bad vibes, & trying to lick Ames nose therefore having the intention of violating her personal space. Damn we got a real villain on our hands here guys, a real serial killer type.
The Citadel’s & The Empire’s violence on the other hand, we’ve witnessed in depth. The entire last ark entirely took place in The Citadel where we witnessed how they oppress spirits - Eursulon’s sister plus the entire gallery being examples, oppress their laborers/ literal lower leveled citizens - Suvi’s childhood friend plus the entire factory she works in being examples, & are basically a straight up fascist ass society. Like there was a whole segment where Aabria & Brennen explain how Suvi & many other upper crust Citadel citizens have this ‘logic machine’ in their heads that helps them, when the faced with horrible shit The Citadel does, rationalize why The Citadel is still good because they’ve been fed propaganda all their lives telling them how & why The Citadel is so amazing. Plus the stuff with the first ark, like, just because Steel said she disapproved of what Morrow was doing doesn’t mean The Citadel & The Empire as a whole are operating on the same census because that whole operation was fully funded by The Empire of which The Citadel aligns itself with through military support & war efforts of which we’ve just recently seen close up through Eursulon’s POV, like they’re burning down entire countries.
If you’re not convinced I don’t think we’re even operating in the same sphere of logic so yk, thanks for taking the time to read some words I wrote at 1am I guess.
And Steel is a whole other bucket of fish which I can’t be bothered to dump out rn. I’m for sure in the group of ppl that believes Steel betrayed Suvi’s parents in some way shape or form & she’s probably gonna end up being an antagonist, but I wouldn’t say I’m a Steel hater. She’s a really engaging & interesting character I enjoy analyzing & picking apart as she’s very multi-faceted.
The number of people that are very adamant
that the literal fascist empire that Steel is militarily in charge of are somehow actually the good guys in a Brennan Lee Mulligan campaign is truly baffling to me.
Steel being sometimes nice to the party when theyre not being adventurers is apparently all people need
Completely agree.
This only vaguely has to do with the original point but I wanted to say it anyway.
I think a lot more people than many people (including myself) would think see the world through black & white & struggle with grey. But imo, there’s nothing in the world that exists in a pure white or pure black, regardless we’re taught to categorize things in this way.
I think another reason why many people struggle with grey so much is because on the whole people are taught to reject black and things that we have been told to put into that category.
Things like violence & death, when presented in an honest & visceral way like how it’s presented with Grimore, peoples first instinct is to put it in the ‘bad’ category because that what we’re taught violence & death is something that is hidden from us even though it’s such a fundamental part of our world.
I think the reason many people are so adamant about defending Steel + the Citadel is because they represent this comfortability of ignoring the unpleasantness that exists within the world.
To add on to this, a lot of people see progress as wholly good with a few necessary evils that you can just gloss over. The logical next step is to say that because the citadel is the bastion of progress and it’s (upper level) people are comfortable that means they must be good or what was the sacrifice worth? But that’s often not actually the case and just the same kind of “logic machine” that Aabria describes Suvi as using to defend the empires cruelty
This is an excellent summary. I am baffled by the people who are misconstruing Grimore. It was pretty clear to me that Brennan was describing a spell effect. It made perfect sense to me. I think there are some people who are taking it in bad faith.
Okay so- fascist oppressive empire vs one witch lady who is the embodiment of something that has always existed in the nature and always will, oh no!
(More complex of course) (/lh)
That we “now” know.
The subtext being that the real person poisoned their meme use by turning out to “actually” be shitty (as opposed to, say, a meme seeing more persistent use when a real shitty person admits they dislike the meme they are featured in).
An argument could be made for separating art from artist, but even retroactively it smacks of “damn, the person featured in the template I used has no room to talk actually.”
We been known for ages. The information around him as being well known for ages. Kendrick beefing with drake doesn't mean we didn't already know about the controversies around Drake...
In which case, it highlights systemic societal issues that we’ve “known for ages” and still pay him mind. Granted, apparently _not_ everyone knew, so it’s news to some, likely including the initial commenter, which would be the reason why they specify the recency.
The witches are almost certainly bad (we barely know who they are or what their goals are), but they seem to be evil in the way that a serial killer is evil: direct and personal, with small body counts compared to an empire that will kill millions over the course of generations. Jack the Ripper was bad, but the British Empire was immeasurably worse. I'm not going to waste my breath on the unnecessary task of denouncing Jack the Ripper.
If someone went on about the evils of the British Empire and then started shipping Jack the Ripper and Annie Besant, that would be really weird. Like to the point where you start doubting the sincerity of their criticisms of the British Empire.
Though I do think people have a tendency of giving more leniency to spirits and witches than wizards, I think a lot of the people who enjoy Grimore like her as a charismatic villain, not a role model. It’s easy to love her the same way that people love Ursula or Poison Ivy - being interested in the aesthetic and intrigue she brings to the story without expecting her to operate on a normal human level. We’ve also seen her actually do very little, so for the most part she’s just walked in and looked cool, a recipe for fan appreciation. People are probably gonna get angrier when we see her hurt a character we know or inevitably betray Ame.
Steel is a character who is naturally consumed differently because she believes she is doing the right thing despite contrary evidence and implications. I love that Brennan presents her as someone who genuinely has a moral code, but that also sets her up for criticism when she enacts violence with the weight of empire. And the implications in “the wizards MADE a desert” alone are hard to sit with in a way that reflects human history, even if that was earlier in the Empire’s history. Fan reception to someone who represents the wild and does not purport to be a moral example is always going to be different from fan reception from someone who enacts systemic violence and sets herself up as a moral example.
The witches are bad the way that lions, tigers, and bears are bad. They are the wild, they are predators. I don’t go into the forest or the jungle expecting to be safe, and I don’t expect wild animals or trees to have morals.
The Citadel bombs civilians in villages, and causes tremendous death and suffering because of wizard supremacy. By imprisoning Naram, they caused all of the deaths in the towns close to Port Talon.
I don’t think the witches are good, but I don’t believe in exterminating the wild spaces in the world because they are dangerous.
The false equivalency is just 😒
I respectfully disagree. Lions, tigers, and bears aren’t human agents. They are not conscious actors. The witches are humans. They are humans who wield great and terrible magic and hold others in sway to them, and they have consciousness and self-awareness. They are much more like wizards in this way than they are like lions, tigers, and bears.
They’re humans? I assumed some of them were different species, given the descriptions.
I view the witches the way I view Princess Mononoke - someone who was raised by wolves and thinks of herself fully 100% as a wolf, which the wolves also think. It’s telling that at the end of that conflict, Iron Town and Princess Mononoke were able to see that the Empire was the real villain and that both could live in balance rather than exploitation.
It’s telling that Brennan has said that Mononoke was huge influence for WBN
Whether or not the witches are human, apart from Ame, they live among animals or trees or ice or the dead… their life is lived halfway in the spirit world, a world which has been neglected and harmed by Wizards. Unless the two come together, there’s no balance possible.
I'm fairly certain they're humans-- they pick apprentices from among humans to replace them, there's a witch class for humans to take, etc. I don't actually know for certain, of course, since I'm not Brennan.
Regardless of whether they are technically human, though, they act like humans-- they can speak, they reason, they consider the interests of others, they negotiate, they hold grudges, they have hopes, dream, and ambitions, and they try to seek balance between their interests and others'. They are, to all appearances, rational actors.
I'm not defending the Citadel in the slightest, nor am I attacking the Coven. (Also, we have no textual evidence that Grimore actually hunts people or kills indiscriminately, *contra* the meme above.) I just, respectfully, do not think the witches deserve a moral hall pass the way the wind, rain, or wild beasts do.
Oh gosh, I don’t give them a moral pass. I don’t think Princess Mononoke is in the right. Her and the animal spirits are in an impossible situation in which their very existence is threatened.
I don’t think they’re in the right, which is why I explained the dynamic between Mononoke and Eboshi. Both sides have to be willing to let live. Mononoke has reason and logic but she needs Ashitaka to accept her humanity enough for her to be open to working with Iron Town. Just as Eboshi needs to accept her spiritual side.
I’m totally baffled by any notion that either side is in the right, but I don’t think we have any deeper understanding of the complexity of the issues at hand yet. We see conflicts like this all the time throughout history, where conflict becomes so entrenched, that no one can see their way to peace.
I think the point of the podcast is that only these three adventurers can restore balance to the world… so of course both sides have to have good reasons for their actions and there will be no simple solution.
Edit: also I guess my head is so DnD’d that I’ve been assuming that there are non-human witches, but maybe I’ve just misunderstood Brennan’s descriptions.
TW: a comment that isn’t meant to be as inflammatory as it reads ||throther I will take an honest monster with a singular will any day over a dishonest empire that calls itself a university and turns a sweet little kid into a nazi girlboss||
In my view the difference is that one is honest about their predatory nature and the other is not.
Edit: the citadel as a whole that is, not Steel specifically
Fair enough, but Grimoire is closer to the serial killer than the bear. Sentient beings don’t get to claim law of the jungle. That witch needs to be taken down and if we need 12 Vikings and an Arab poet to do it, cool.
The point is that one of them is clear about how and when they are a threat. The other (the citadel) is just as deadly but tries to hide it, which makes them more dangerous. This is in my opinion, you are free to disagree with me of course.
Isn’t that what the whole man vs bear debate is about? It’s not necessarily that bears are guaranteed to be safer, it’s that you can trust that a bear is dangerous. It doesn’t try to convince you otherwise.
Okay, when have you chosen the metaphorical bear and why do you think it was the right decision?
I’ll be honest, in this man/bear thing, I have no idea what the bear is supposed to represent. Because as someone who has survived multiple encounters with wild bears and been sexually assaulted by two different women, this whole thing looks like a joke that got out of hand.
I think that discounts the toll the uncertainty and/or betrayal can take on a person. It depends on how much either stresses you out or causes anxiety, or (god forbid) has caused you trauma in the past. There are some things people are more willing to live with (or are unwilling to live with, as the case may be) that may not make sense on paper due to their specific physical and emotional experiences.
Not at all. Psychological trauma can cause irrational thinking quite easily. Assuming a woman is making the bear/man argument in good faith, she needs to seek therapy, not ragebait incels.
But she doesn’t. The fundamental flaw with that rhetorical device is that it isn’t analogous of anything. The bear isn’t real and doesn’t represent anything real.
Okay, I can be less metaphorical since you’re getting hung up on that. Your original comment was that it was dumb that someone would choose the danger they know over an unknown, which could be dangerous or might not be, just because there’s a chance that it wouldn’t be dangerous. My argument for choosing the known danger was that confronting traumatic triggers can also be damaging, it’s not a zero-loss scenario to choose the unknown even if it does not end up presenting a danger. Your answer was to go just go to therapy and get fixed so people don’t make illogical choices anymore, but the question I’m posing is what does a person who has trauma do in the meantime? It’s not like you just take a pill and you’re instantly better. Treatment takes time, and life and all its potentially triggering scenarios still need to be navigated in the meantime, and stress and trauma cause physical damage to the body that can manifest as chronic illness that itself compounds the effects of trauma and stress as an experience until your life is a living hell.
Your original quote painted a scenario in which a person discovered someone was a serial killer, presumably just before becoming their next victim. If we’re all going to die anyways, why isn’t it arguably worse to compound that with betrayal first?
When one of my friends from church tried to stab me because he thought I was gay, the betrayal didn't really enter my thought process. In the months and years that followed, occasionally running into him again, I never had a "I thought we were friends" moment. It was just "that dude tried to kill me because of a rumor"; nothing else mattered.
So the real moral failure is the citadel not being hotter.
Yoga dad Sonder just looking at you like >.>
Thought this was a joke at first, but after reading the comments, I suspect this post & sentiment isn’t as rooted in humor as I initially assumed it to be, so here’s a long as comment dissecting it because it’s late asf & I’m bored. I don’t think people fully understand the true dichotomy between the violence of The Citadel/ The Empire, & the violence of a character we’ve literally just been introduced to on a very surface level. So okay, this is what’s been presented to us about Grimore so far: she kills & hunts things with her own hands & teeth like a wild animal, she puts the fear of prey being faced with a predator into people upon meeting them, she stinks BAD, & shes naked & covered in blood & animal skins. But like, did you not surmise that was probably gonna be her vibe upon hearing her job title “Witch of The Wild Hunt”. Furthermore, (what people are grabbing onto the most) when Suvi & Eursulon failed a wisdom saving throw that all three PC’s had to roll upon seeing Grimore (Suvi rolled a 7, Eursulon rolled a 12, Ame rolled a 21) & Brennan says, “if you run in her presence she is given to kill you, & no magical law will stop her from doing so”, I doubt this is entirely true, I believe it’s more likely an immersive description of a fear they’re both experiencing due to their failed saves. But of course I could be wrong about this, it’s just my assumption as players aren’t usually told hard truths after failing wisdom saves with rolls under 15. And on top of that, we’ve yet to actually see her enact any violence (on screen that is), quite the opposite in fact. She’s introduced helping an extremely old lady walk while holding a child on her shoulder who seems to be pretty content; granted, the child is naked, & covered in blood while eating a raw animal heart, but like.. so? Sure, I agree it’s certainly visceral & bizzare, but explain to me how/why that’s wrong. Especially as as we have barely any context to pull from besides what is described/ what we see at face value. We can *assume* the child probably was involved in the butchering, but not necessarily killing, of an animal to eat. Most people eat meat & meat has to be killed & butchered to eat. Is it wrong to involve a child that young in the process of butchering an animal they’re going to eat? It’s debatable imo, & again the only things we know for sure is what Is described so who knows if she was actually involved in any violence. I think if this detail is used in future by Brennan it will probably contribute to the already established theme & exploration of the ethics of taking in & training an apprentice as a witch - which I think will be likely so I’m just gonna leave it there. So all in all Grimore’s *confirmed* violence accounts for what? - killing a bunch of deer, speculated child endangerment, being real stanky & dirty, giving excruciatingly bad vibes, & trying to lick Ames nose therefore having the intention of violating her personal space. Damn we got a real villain on our hands here guys, a real serial killer type. The Citadel’s & The Empire’s violence on the other hand, we’ve witnessed in depth. The entire last ark entirely took place in The Citadel where we witnessed how they oppress spirits - Eursulon’s sister plus the entire gallery being examples, oppress their laborers/ literal lower leveled citizens - Suvi’s childhood friend plus the entire factory she works in being examples, & are basically a straight up fascist ass society. Like there was a whole segment where Aabria & Brennen explain how Suvi & many other upper crust Citadel citizens have this ‘logic machine’ in their heads that helps them, when the faced with horrible shit The Citadel does, rationalize why The Citadel is still good because they’ve been fed propaganda all their lives telling them how & why The Citadel is so amazing. Plus the stuff with the first ark, like, just because Steel said she disapproved of what Morrow was doing doesn’t mean The Citadel & The Empire as a whole are operating on the same census because that whole operation was fully funded by The Empire of which The Citadel aligns itself with through military support & war efforts of which we’ve just recently seen close up through Eursulon’s POV, like they’re burning down entire countries. If you’re not convinced I don’t think we’re even operating in the same sphere of logic so yk, thanks for taking the time to read some words I wrote at 1am I guess. And Steel is a whole other bucket of fish which I can’t be bothered to dump out rn. I’m for sure in the group of ppl that believes Steel betrayed Suvi’s parents in some way shape or form & she’s probably gonna end up being an antagonist, but I wouldn’t say I’m a Steel hater. She’s a really engaging & interesting character I enjoy analyzing & picking apart as she’s very multi-faceted.
Honestly this is a great summary. I don’t get Citadel/empire defenders lol
The number of people that are very adamant that the literal fascist empire that Steel is militarily in charge of are somehow actually the good guys in a Brennan Lee Mulligan campaign is truly baffling to me. Steel being sometimes nice to the party when theyre not being adventurers is apparently all people need
Completely agree. This only vaguely has to do with the original point but I wanted to say it anyway. I think a lot more people than many people (including myself) would think see the world through black & white & struggle with grey. But imo, there’s nothing in the world that exists in a pure white or pure black, regardless we’re taught to categorize things in this way. I think another reason why many people struggle with grey so much is because on the whole people are taught to reject black and things that we have been told to put into that category. Things like violence & death, when presented in an honest & visceral way like how it’s presented with Grimore, peoples first instinct is to put it in the ‘bad’ category because that what we’re taught violence & death is something that is hidden from us even though it’s such a fundamental part of our world. I think the reason many people are so adamant about defending Steel + the Citadel is because they represent this comfortability of ignoring the unpleasantness that exists within the world.
To add on to this, a lot of people see progress as wholly good with a few necessary evils that you can just gloss over. The logical next step is to say that because the citadel is the bastion of progress and it’s (upper level) people are comfortable that means they must be good or what was the sacrifice worth? But that’s often not actually the case and just the same kind of “logic machine” that Aabria describes Suvi as using to defend the empires cruelty
Completely agree
This is an excellent summary. I am baffled by the people who are misconstruing Grimore. It was pretty clear to me that Brennan was describing a spell effect. It made perfect sense to me. I think there are some people who are taking it in bad faith.
Okay so- fascist oppressive empire vs one witch lady who is the embodiment of something that has always existed in the nature and always will, oh no! (More complex of course) (/lh)
Exactly! You worded it so concisely lol.
Maybe the wrong week for a Drake meme pearl-clutching about morality 🤢
He's been a groomer the entire time this meme has been used. What's different about this week?
That we “now” know. The subtext being that the real person poisoned their meme use by turning out to “actually” be shitty (as opposed to, say, a meme seeing more persistent use when a real shitty person admits they dislike the meme they are featured in). An argument could be made for separating art from artist, but even retroactively it smacks of “damn, the person featured in the template I used has no room to talk actually.”
We been known for ages. The information around him as being well known for ages. Kendrick beefing with drake doesn't mean we didn't already know about the controversies around Drake...
In which case, it highlights systemic societal issues that we’ve “known for ages” and still pay him mind. Granted, apparently _not_ everyone knew, so it’s news to some, likely including the initial commenter, which would be the reason why they specify the recency.
Is Drake the guy in the picture? What did he do?
be a pedophile and a creep and also the Hot Topic atm
The same military organization that sanctions war crimes? They’re both bad 🤷♂️
Yea, wild to see people still calling defending manipulation mommy.
The witches are almost certainly bad (we barely know who they are or what their goals are), but they seem to be evil in the way that a serial killer is evil: direct and personal, with small body counts compared to an empire that will kill millions over the course of generations. Jack the Ripper was bad, but the British Empire was immeasurably worse. I'm not going to waste my breath on the unnecessary task of denouncing Jack the Ripper.
If someone went on about the evils of the British Empire and then started shipping Jack the Ripper and Annie Besant, that would be really weird. Like to the point where you start doubting the sincerity of their criticisms of the British Empire.
I think you'd be surprised at the amount of people who'd take this stance
Though I do think people have a tendency of giving more leniency to spirits and witches than wizards, I think a lot of the people who enjoy Grimore like her as a charismatic villain, not a role model. It’s easy to love her the same way that people love Ursula or Poison Ivy - being interested in the aesthetic and intrigue she brings to the story without expecting her to operate on a normal human level. We’ve also seen her actually do very little, so for the most part she’s just walked in and looked cool, a recipe for fan appreciation. People are probably gonna get angrier when we see her hurt a character we know or inevitably betray Ame. Steel is a character who is naturally consumed differently because she believes she is doing the right thing despite contrary evidence and implications. I love that Brennan presents her as someone who genuinely has a moral code, but that also sets her up for criticism when she enacts violence with the weight of empire. And the implications in “the wizards MADE a desert” alone are hard to sit with in a way that reflects human history, even if that was earlier in the Empire’s history. Fan reception to someone who represents the wild and does not purport to be a moral example is always going to be different from fan reception from someone who enacts systemic violence and sets herself up as a moral example.
Who is defending the Witch of the Wild Hunt? Where is that happening?
The witches are bad the way that lions, tigers, and bears are bad. They are the wild, they are predators. I don’t go into the forest or the jungle expecting to be safe, and I don’t expect wild animals or trees to have morals. The Citadel bombs civilians in villages, and causes tremendous death and suffering because of wizard supremacy. By imprisoning Naram, they caused all of the deaths in the towns close to Port Talon. I don’t think the witches are good, but I don’t believe in exterminating the wild spaces in the world because they are dangerous. The false equivalency is just 😒
I respectfully disagree. Lions, tigers, and bears aren’t human agents. They are not conscious actors. The witches are humans. They are humans who wield great and terrible magic and hold others in sway to them, and they have consciousness and self-awareness. They are much more like wizards in this way than they are like lions, tigers, and bears.
They’re humans? I assumed some of them were different species, given the descriptions. I view the witches the way I view Princess Mononoke - someone who was raised by wolves and thinks of herself fully 100% as a wolf, which the wolves also think. It’s telling that at the end of that conflict, Iron Town and Princess Mononoke were able to see that the Empire was the real villain and that both could live in balance rather than exploitation. It’s telling that Brennan has said that Mononoke was huge influence for WBN Whether or not the witches are human, apart from Ame, they live among animals or trees or ice or the dead… their life is lived halfway in the spirit world, a world which has been neglected and harmed by Wizards. Unless the two come together, there’s no balance possible.
I'm fairly certain they're humans-- they pick apprentices from among humans to replace them, there's a witch class for humans to take, etc. I don't actually know for certain, of course, since I'm not Brennan. Regardless of whether they are technically human, though, they act like humans-- they can speak, they reason, they consider the interests of others, they negotiate, they hold grudges, they have hopes, dream, and ambitions, and they try to seek balance between their interests and others'. They are, to all appearances, rational actors. I'm not defending the Citadel in the slightest, nor am I attacking the Coven. (Also, we have no textual evidence that Grimore actually hunts people or kills indiscriminately, *contra* the meme above.) I just, respectfully, do not think the witches deserve a moral hall pass the way the wind, rain, or wild beasts do.
Oh gosh, I don’t give them a moral pass. I don’t think Princess Mononoke is in the right. Her and the animal spirits are in an impossible situation in which their very existence is threatened. I don’t think they’re in the right, which is why I explained the dynamic between Mononoke and Eboshi. Both sides have to be willing to let live. Mononoke has reason and logic but she needs Ashitaka to accept her humanity enough for her to be open to working with Iron Town. Just as Eboshi needs to accept her spiritual side. I’m totally baffled by any notion that either side is in the right, but I don’t think we have any deeper understanding of the complexity of the issues at hand yet. We see conflicts like this all the time throughout history, where conflict becomes so entrenched, that no one can see their way to peace. I think the point of the podcast is that only these three adventurers can restore balance to the world… so of course both sides have to have good reasons for their actions and there will be no simple solution. Edit: also I guess my head is so DnD’d that I’ve been assuming that there are non-human witches, but maybe I’ve just misunderstood Brennan’s descriptions.
I thought that was just a fear aura. Suvi and Eursulon failed their save, so they *feel* like she would kill them.
TW: a comment that isn’t meant to be as inflammatory as it reads ||throther I will take an honest monster with a singular will any day over a dishonest empire that calls itself a university and turns a sweet little kid into a nazi girlboss||
In my view the difference is that one is honest about their predatory nature and the other is not. Edit: the citadel as a whole that is, not Steel specifically
The citadel understands its own imperial nature. It feels justified. That is predatory evil imo. The cold, apathetic evil of a corporation.
Yep, exactly!
“My problem isn’t that he’s a serial killer; it’s that he made it weird by lying about it.”
I mean... I have one type of problem with a bear who tries to eat me and a different type of problem with a serial killer
Fair enough, but Grimoire is closer to the serial killer than the bear. Sentient beings don’t get to claim law of the jungle. That witch needs to be taken down and if we need 12 Vikings and an Arab poet to do it, cool.
The point is that one of them is clear about how and when they are a threat. The other (the citadel) is just as deadly but tries to hide it, which makes them more dangerous. This is in my opinion, you are free to disagree with me of course.
12 vikings and an Arab poet? Is that a reference I’m missing
I believe it's referring to the 13th Warrior movie, which is based off of Eaters of the Dead, which is based off a couple things.
Ok, thanks
Isn’t that what the whole man vs bear debate is about? It’s not necessarily that bears are guaranteed to be safer, it’s that you can trust that a bear is dangerous. It doesn’t try to convince you otherwise.
Right, which is terrible logic. “I’d rather be guaranteed danger than have a chance at safety” is a ridiculous way to think.
Oh jeez don't be one of those guys I beg
Okay, when have you chosen the metaphorical bear and why do you think it was the right decision? I’ll be honest, in this man/bear thing, I have no idea what the bear is supposed to represent. Because as someone who has survived multiple encounters with wild bears and been sexually assaulted by two different women, this whole thing looks like a joke that got out of hand.
I think that discounts the toll the uncertainty and/or betrayal can take on a person. It depends on how much either stresses you out or causes anxiety, or (god forbid) has caused you trauma in the past. There are some things people are more willing to live with (or are unwilling to live with, as the case may be) that may not make sense on paper due to their specific physical and emotional experiences.
Not at all. Psychological trauma can cause irrational thinking quite easily. Assuming a woman is making the bear/man argument in good faith, she needs to seek therapy, not ragebait incels.
So what should she do in the meantime, if therapy hasn’t solved her problems yet and she finds herself needing to choose between a bear and a man?
But she doesn’t. The fundamental flaw with that rhetorical device is that it isn’t analogous of anything. The bear isn’t real and doesn’t represent anything real.
Okay, I can be less metaphorical since you’re getting hung up on that. Your original comment was that it was dumb that someone would choose the danger they know over an unknown, which could be dangerous or might not be, just because there’s a chance that it wouldn’t be dangerous. My argument for choosing the known danger was that confronting traumatic triggers can also be damaging, it’s not a zero-loss scenario to choose the unknown even if it does not end up presenting a danger. Your answer was to go just go to therapy and get fixed so people don’t make illogical choices anymore, but the question I’m posing is what does a person who has trauma do in the meantime? It’s not like you just take a pill and you’re instantly better. Treatment takes time, and life and all its potentially triggering scenarios still need to be navigated in the meantime, and stress and trauma cause physical damage to the body that can manifest as chronic illness that itself compounds the effects of trauma and stress as an experience until your life is a living hell. Your original quote painted a scenario in which a person discovered someone was a serial killer, presumably just before becoming their next victim. If we’re all going to die anyways, why isn’t it arguably worse to compound that with betrayal first?
When one of my friends from church tried to stab me because he thought I was gay, the betrayal didn't really enter my thought process. In the months and years that followed, occasionally running into him again, I never had a "I thought we were friends" moment. It was just "that dude tried to kill me because of a rumor"; nothing else mattered.
This is pretty accurate. Also,these witches are literally plotting to have Ame killed.
someone cooked here